What ever happened in Hildorien?
- Thread starter Haerangil
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amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
Whether we show it or not, we need to work out, in broad strokes, what happened. In way that is convincing to *us*. So that we can work with what falls out from it.
Haerangil
Well-Known Member
I don't know. I still am NOT convinced about this whole super-human thing, then again i think those men, whatever their nature is, are not really learned ore wise in anyway. They kind of listen to the burning briar and are happy, but then somebody much like themselves , only far greater and more powerful, shows up and teaches them doubts... i think that sort of COULD work, but i doubt it would work without the Dark elves playing at least SOME part in it.
I guess at last SOME men, those who would later rebel should at one point meet Avari and be inspired by them in one way or another.There needs to be enmity and friendship between both at an early point, not only after men are already corrupted..
I guess at last SOME men, those who would later rebel should at one point meet Avari and be inspired by them in one way or another.There needs to be enmity and friendship between both at an early point, not only after men are already corrupted..
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
Perhaps the Avari inspire the Edain to go westward to Beleriand to seek out the Valar?
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
The Edain is part of my problem with how to tell this story. Tell a story of this devastating fall, where the primary practical output of the story is the AWESOME three kindreds of the Edain.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
The Edain are maybe rebels from the Morgoth worship, as foreshadowing of Numenor?
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
Yes, but they have to have already fallen also. It's not just the bad Men who fall, it is ALL of them. Every single one. Babies, grandmas, the whole works.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
Hence why they’re deviant from the Morgoth worship. Some of them chose to turn away from the worship of Morgoth, but the damage was done.
Tolkien was playing coy with this story for several reasons. One, it would be too easy to make it recognizable as 'oh, hey - that's just the Garden of Eden story.' But more importantly, he thought it a mistake to introduce the actual concept of Christianity into a fantasy world. And thirdly...these stories are elf-centric. So, the tale of the Fall of Man is not really something they had anything to do with and not something they 'get'.
He wanted his mythology to not explicitly include the Christian religion, but to be believable/recognizable to someone who believed what a Christian believes. Obviously, the line is crossed when you introduce the Incarnation of Eru to bring about the redemption of mankind. (An idea that comes up in the Athrabeth.) And, from a Christian perspective, that need for redemption finds its origin in...the Fall.
Original Man (Unfallen Man) has a tendency to act according to God's will. He has freedom of choice, but his natural inclinations are aligned with...being a good person. So, it's 'natural' to be good and do the right thing. This person does not experience temptation as an 'urge' to do something that they want to, but know they shouldn't. Therefore, temptation is more of an intellectual exercise rather than an issue of enticement via more carnal means.
Then the Fall happens, and oh look, people don't always follow their consciences. Concupiscence exists, and temptation is now something to be struggled with. What you want to do and ought to do isn't necessarily what you wind up doing, because there were urges to do something else that overrode your good intentions. The struggle is real, and lots of horrible evil things are done. Humanity is a mess.
And then, REDEMPTION. What Jesus offers was (among other things) a life perfectly lived. Through grace, there can be a purification of the heart so that what we want is again aligned with what is good and the will of God. There is no complete overcoming of concupiscence in this life time (even saints have their faults), but this purification continues into heaven, resulting in a new Redeemed Man - similar to Original Man, but with the lived experience of Fallen Man.
Pretty much all we see is Fallen Man, with glimpses of Redeemed Man here and there, but we've never seen Original Man, and don't know what it would be like to live in a society where all people were fully redeemed. So....it's an interesting way of bookending human experience, and certainly something Tolkien was very cognizant of...but how much of this do we want to introduce into our project? The idea of an original sin that stains human nature so that it can never again be as it was created to be without direct intervention by God...well, that's just 'default', really. By the time we meet Men, they will be Fallen, which is to say...normal human beings. The real challenge is to show the elves as UNFALLEN, when the Silmarillion elves spend so much time doing all the awful unimaginable things that fallen Men do.
So what do we show? We will have a glimpse of the newly awakened Men in a paradise-like setting, but...that's really our only allusion to their origins. We aren't going to show enough story with them to show them acting or behaving in any particular way as Unfallen creatures. What can we have be their reason for falling? Worshipping Morgoth would certainly do the trick, but...why would they? What could Morgoth (or Sauron) say or do to convince them that what they really want out of life is to follow the dark god? Do we want to convey some other temptation?
He wanted his mythology to not explicitly include the Christian religion, but to be believable/recognizable to someone who believed what a Christian believes. Obviously, the line is crossed when you introduce the Incarnation of Eru to bring about the redemption of mankind. (An idea that comes up in the Athrabeth.) And, from a Christian perspective, that need for redemption finds its origin in...the Fall.
Original Man (Unfallen Man) has a tendency to act according to God's will. He has freedom of choice, but his natural inclinations are aligned with...being a good person. So, it's 'natural' to be good and do the right thing. This person does not experience temptation as an 'urge' to do something that they want to, but know they shouldn't. Therefore, temptation is more of an intellectual exercise rather than an issue of enticement via more carnal means.
Then the Fall happens, and oh look, people don't always follow their consciences. Concupiscence exists, and temptation is now something to be struggled with. What you want to do and ought to do isn't necessarily what you wind up doing, because there were urges to do something else that overrode your good intentions. The struggle is real, and lots of horrible evil things are done. Humanity is a mess.
And then, REDEMPTION. What Jesus offers was (among other things) a life perfectly lived. Through grace, there can be a purification of the heart so that what we want is again aligned with what is good and the will of God. There is no complete overcoming of concupiscence in this life time (even saints have their faults), but this purification continues into heaven, resulting in a new Redeemed Man - similar to Original Man, but with the lived experience of Fallen Man.
Pretty much all we see is Fallen Man, with glimpses of Redeemed Man here and there, but we've never seen Original Man, and don't know what it would be like to live in a society where all people were fully redeemed. So....it's an interesting way of bookending human experience, and certainly something Tolkien was very cognizant of...but how much of this do we want to introduce into our project? The idea of an original sin that stains human nature so that it can never again be as it was created to be without direct intervention by God...well, that's just 'default', really. By the time we meet Men, they will be Fallen, which is to say...normal human beings. The real challenge is to show the elves as UNFALLEN, when the Silmarillion elves spend so much time doing all the awful unimaginable things that fallen Men do.
So what do we show? We will have a glimpse of the newly awakened Men in a paradise-like setting, but...that's really our only allusion to their origins. We aren't going to show enough story with them to show them acting or behaving in any particular way as Unfallen creatures. What can we have be their reason for falling? Worshipping Morgoth would certainly do the trick, but...why would they? What could Morgoth (or Sauron) say or do to convince them that what they really want out of life is to follow the dark god? Do we want to convey some other temptation?
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
Ultimately that's my problem. I think the only thing that it could be are lies - by all the things I've read about the subject (Arda-wise, I mean, not talking about Earth here), they are objectively, categorically worse off than they were before their fall. So it can only have been lies that brought them down - any truth would only work in the other direction. But what sort of lies? What thing that they don't already have could they be promised? I guess it would have to follow along with the Eden story and be knowledge, wouldn't it? "I will complete your understanding of the world in a way that your God refuses to", that sort of thing.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
Maybe Morgoth convinces them that Eru does not care about them, otherwise why are they much weaker and more unhealthy than Elves, and that he, Morgoth, can make them worth something?
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
A different thing to consider.
What was the "intent" (assuming for a minute that God's Plan didn't include the Fall of Man - let's pretend that Unfallen Man was meant to exist for longer)? Was it meant to be that Unfallen Man would comingle with Elves on Arda, but they fall before that can occur? Maybe what causes their fall is a sort of parallel to one of the factors in the fall of the Noldor. Morgoth informs Unfallen Man about Elves, of whom they have previously heard nothing. For whatever reason, God had not yet introduced his second children to his first. That might start the ball rolling.
What was the "intent" (assuming for a minute that God's Plan didn't include the Fall of Man - let's pretend that Unfallen Man was meant to exist for longer)? Was it meant to be that Unfallen Man would comingle with Elves on Arda, but they fall before that can occur? Maybe what causes their fall is a sort of parallel to one of the factors in the fall of the Noldor. Morgoth informs Unfallen Man about Elves, of whom they have previously heard nothing. For whatever reason, God had not yet introduced his second children to his first. That might start the ball rolling.
Ah! Yes the envy of elves is something that Sauron will use at Numenor, and I like the parallel with the fall of the Noldor - learning about something new allows the one telling you to paint the picture however they want, so trying to get the (new) Men to distrust the Elves they haven't even met yet is certainly a Morgoth move! And whatever knowledge they have of Eru, the fact that Eru hadn't told them about elves yet looks suspicious, just the way the Valar not telling Elves about Men would seem (to the Elves). I think we have to be very careful about that - Eru doesn't makes mistakes - so it's possible that the Men *were* primed to meet other beings like them...but they meet Morgoth, not Elves, and well....
The Edain can be those Men who, after the Fall, actually meet elves (Avari) and realize that these can be their allies, not their enemy, and listen to them when they tell them of a land in the West..... Those who became 'true believers' in the cult Morgoth (or Sauron) sets up would shun contact with Elves as hateful. And those completely under Morgoth's sway would become fodder for breeding more orcs.
Eventually we'll have to figure out whether it's more important for the Men to fall as the direct result of Morgoth's actions, or if it's more important to have a conniving beautiful tempter around to orchestrate their Fall. Either way could work (especially as we aren't showing this), but we lose something with either choice. If we go with Morgoth, we lose the idea that it was a devious deceit that caught them off guard, a fair-seeming messenger whose lies didn't sound like lies. If we go with Sauron...we have an 'indirect' Fall-by-Morgoth, thus showing that even a lesser Maia is capable of corrupting Men without any innate Vala-power being used. We could try for both - have Morgoth manage some kind of glamor or vision/projection that talks to the Men, concealing his dark form. Or we could have Morgoth imbue Sauron with power, so he uses Morgoth's own corrupting force to achieve his task. Or we could have Morgoth find Men and Sauron corrupt them (or vice versa). Or some other variation on these options.
The Edain can be those Men who, after the Fall, actually meet elves (Avari) and realize that these can be their allies, not their enemy, and listen to them when they tell them of a land in the West..... Those who became 'true believers' in the cult Morgoth (or Sauron) sets up would shun contact with Elves as hateful. And those completely under Morgoth's sway would become fodder for breeding more orcs.
Eventually we'll have to figure out whether it's more important for the Men to fall as the direct result of Morgoth's actions, or if it's more important to have a conniving beautiful tempter around to orchestrate their Fall. Either way could work (especially as we aren't showing this), but we lose something with either choice. If we go with Morgoth, we lose the idea that it was a devious deceit that caught them off guard, a fair-seeming messenger whose lies didn't sound like lies. If we go with Sauron...we have an 'indirect' Fall-by-Morgoth, thus showing that even a lesser Maia is capable of corrupting Men without any innate Vala-power being used. We could try for both - have Morgoth manage some kind of glamor or vision/projection that talks to the Men, concealing his dark form. Or we could have Morgoth imbue Sauron with power, so he uses Morgoth's own corrupting force to achieve his task. Or we could have Morgoth find Men and Sauron corrupt them (or vice versa). Or some other variation on these options.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
That’s what I was thinking of, that the Men would be persuaded to distrust and resent the Elves, make them think that Eru didn’t care about Men.
amysrevenge
Well-Known Member
Thinking of it longer, I think that Elves are really the only wedge that Morgoth could drive in. It leads directly to the whole mortal/immortal thing that ends up being the real issue. You know, at this point Morgoth probably even has a few captive Elves to dangle in front of them, to act in any way he desires. Ooooh, and maybe even one of them is less enthralled than Morgoth thinks, and ends up being the thing that leads to the Edain splitting off.
I have only told you what Tolkien said about Unfallen Men being physically and psychologically different from fallen humans today. I did not make up any of it. MithLuin understand what I was saying.
@Haerangil and @amysrevenge I encourage you to read the Athrabeth and the Tale of Adanel. What I'm talking about won't make sense if you haven't seen the book I am referring to. The Tale of Adanel is perfectly plausible (in the Round World), and I encourage not to dismiss it so quickly. If you aren't able to get a copy, would you please at least take me at my word and believe me when I say that Tolkien wrote it? I am willing to summarize it if you want me to.
Haerangil, most of what I shared is from the Morgoth's Ring (especially Athrabeth, Tale of Adanel, and Myths Transformed) and from Vinyar Tengwar (the Notes on Ore). Only a little is from Letters and Sauron Defeated. I did not make up any of what I wrote, I promise. Every single thing I said is from Tolkien himself.
For Beor's parents, bear in mind that the Men fell in the first few decades of existance, before anyone had died, and their lifespans immediately were reduced to much less than 100 years. Multiple generations must have passed between that and Beor.
About Elves, in the Tale of Adanel the Fall actually happened before Men met Elves. That was an important part of the Tale actually. Whether or not we use the Tale of Adanel as the basis of our version, I feel that the Fall of Men should be a story only about Men, I don't think Elves should be part of the Fall. In any case Tolkien also said in other late texts that Men didn't meet Elves until after their Fall.
What I'm trying to say is that human attraction to brutal strength and violent power only works... on fallen humans. Appeal to jealousy only works... on fallen humans who have met Elves and are already vastly inferior to them. Neither works on unfallen Children who have never met Elves and are their equals anyway. That's why I want to use the underhanded, sweet-sounding, gift-giving trickery depicted in the Tale of Adanel, which doesn't rely on brute strength or violence or jealousy or fear of death.
@Haerangil and @amysrevenge I encourage you to read the Athrabeth and the Tale of Adanel. What I'm talking about won't make sense if you haven't seen the book I am referring to. The Tale of Adanel is perfectly plausible (in the Round World), and I encourage not to dismiss it so quickly. If you aren't able to get a copy, would you please at least take me at my word and believe me when I say that Tolkien wrote it? I am willing to summarize it if you want me to.
Haerangil, most of what I shared is from the Morgoth's Ring (especially Athrabeth, Tale of Adanel, and Myths Transformed) and from Vinyar Tengwar (the Notes on Ore). Only a little is from Letters and Sauron Defeated. I did not make up any of what I wrote, I promise. Every single thing I said is from Tolkien himself.
For Beor's parents, bear in mind that the Men fell in the first few decades of existance, before anyone had died, and their lifespans immediately were reduced to much less than 100 years. Multiple generations must have passed between that and Beor.
About Elves, in the Tale of Adanel the Fall actually happened before Men met Elves. That was an important part of the Tale actually. Whether or not we use the Tale of Adanel as the basis of our version, I feel that the Fall of Men should be a story only about Men, I don't think Elves should be part of the Fall. In any case Tolkien also said in other late texts that Men didn't meet Elves until after their Fall.
What I'm trying to say is that human attraction to brutal strength and violent power only works... on fallen humans. Appeal to jealousy only works... on fallen humans who have met Elves and are already vastly inferior to them. Neither works on unfallen Children who have never met Elves and are their equals anyway. That's why I want to use the underhanded, sweet-sounding, gift-giving trickery depicted in the Tale of Adanel, which doesn't rely on brute strength or violence or jealousy or fear of death.
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Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
How do you propose making the Edain different?
What do you mean Ange1? Different from whom?
Uh, I wasn't proposing the Edain are unfallen. Tolkien did say they Fell along with the rest. The Edain were former Satan-worshippers who repented and tried to worship God again. And the Satanists tried to kill them, so they ran away.
The Edain would be just as human as the rest of us, all the fun of disease and old age and death in childbirth and a lifespan of only 80 years if you're lucky, and Morgoth whispering temptation in their minds... they're just as fallen as other Men.
Uh, I wasn't proposing the Edain are unfallen. Tolkien did say they Fell along with the rest. The Edain were former Satan-worshippers who repented and tried to worship God again. And the Satanists tried to kill them, so they ran away.
The Edain would be just as human as the rest of us, all the fun of disease and old age and death in childbirth and a lifespan of only 80 years if you're lucky, and Morgoth whispering temptation in their minds... they're just as fallen as other Men.
Ange1e4e5
Well-Known Member
As in, how do they break away from the other Men who worship Morgoth and start heading westward to Beleriand?
And what do you think of my idea of Morgoth making Men envious of the Elves and feeling like Eru doesn’t care about them? It comes into play in Numenor.
The Men are jealous of the Elves when they meet them, I'm sure of it. Andreth is full of jealousy towards them, and I think her attitude (minus the jilted lover thing) was likely fairly common among the Edain. It wouldn't be a factor in the Fall itself... even if they had met Elves already, the unfallen Men were their equals and had nothing to be jealous about. But even without Morgoth (or, just with psychic temptation) fallen Men will be jealous of Elves. Some will hate the Elves, some will love or admire or, uh, worship them as gods... some might even do both at the same time...
The breaking away from Satan worship I would play similar to the Tale of Adanel: things weren't yet perfect in Hildorien before the Fall (the Men were still inventing things like food preparation and housing, and Eru was purposely not helping them invent technology) but afterwards Hildorien became an awful place. They soon started suffering disease and painful death, animals became afraid of them, life became full of fear, the Satanist ruler-priest-wizards finall enslaved everybody, etc... it was miserable. And so some people were like "No, the 'Master' who demanded worship was the liar, that Voice [Eru] was telling the truth all along." Then the Satanists tried to kill them and they fled (in my headcanon some ex-Satanists fled in all directions and their descendants are present on every continent). The ones who fled north or northwest met the Avari, and they heard garbled tales about the Valar in the West. They also met the Dwarves at some point, and made friends with them.
And perhaps not everyone who meets the Elves decides they want to be friends. Especially if Morgoth maintains an agent or two out there in the east, encouraging Men to be jealous of Elves? If he has any Orcs out there he can have others... Some of the Edain even turn back from Beleriand, thanks to Morgoth spreading lies among them.
The breaking away from Satan worship I would play similar to the Tale of Adanel: things weren't yet perfect in Hildorien before the Fall (the Men were still inventing things like food preparation and housing, and Eru was purposely not helping them invent technology) but afterwards Hildorien became an awful place. They soon started suffering disease and painful death, animals became afraid of them, life became full of fear, the Satanist ruler-priest-wizards finall enslaved everybody, etc... it was miserable. And so some people were like "No, the 'Master' who demanded worship was the liar, that Voice [Eru] was telling the truth all along." Then the Satanists tried to kill them and they fled (in my headcanon some ex-Satanists fled in all directions and their descendants are present on every continent). The ones who fled north or northwest met the Avari, and they heard garbled tales about the Valar in the West. They also met the Dwarves at some point, and made friends with them.
And perhaps not everyone who meets the Elves decides they want to be friends. Especially if Morgoth maintains an agent or two out there in the east, encouraging Men to be jealous of Elves? If he has any Orcs out there he can have others... Some of the Edain even turn back from Beleriand, thanks to Morgoth spreading lies among them.